The Dreamers Success Center has started a new book club in collaboration with the Chicanx and Latinx Faculty Force for this Spring semester that is open to all faculty, staff and students at Delta. Members of this book club will come together in Holt 201 every other Thursday at 2 p.m. to discuss their thoughts on the chosen readings.
The first meeting will be held on Feb 24.
The club was originally supposed to hold their first official meeting on Jan 27., which was advertised on the fliers the Dreamer’s Success Center posted around campus as well as online, but the event was postponed due to the Dreamers conference held during the following week.
“The club hasn’t started yet because of the Dreamers conference last weekend we had to postpone it,” said Fatima Lozano, club member and student worker at the Dreamer’s Success Center. “The date shown in the flyers is wrong.”
Organizers hope to engage students and promote reading.
“The main purpose of starting this club is to engage students in reading and hope that they develop a new hobby and habit of becoming avid readers,” said Ester Marquez Perez, Resource Specialist for the Dreamers Success Center.
“Many times there is difficulty for the students to speak about their status out of fear and concern…We want all ethnicities and backgrounds to feel represented, to find, even if just a bit of haven at the Dreamers Success Center through this book club,” said Perez.
This book club is currently only offered in person and on campus.
“We understand the accessibility of offering the book club in multiple modalities, however, for the time being, we will focus on in-person only,” said Delta College’s Office of Student Activities in a Facebook post promoting the club. “In the future, we look forward to exploring other modalities to serve our campus population.”
The first book the group is reading is “Tienes Papeles?” It is written by Delta College’s Spanish Professor Manuel Camacho. It is a bilingual story and all of the club meetings are going to be in both Spanish and English as well.
Some other books that the club will be reading this semester include, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen,” by Jose Antonio Vargas, “My Underground American Dream” by Julissa Arce and “The Ungrateful Refugee” by Dina Nayeri.
“We have a great long list of books that will allow our students to see themselves represented through the list of authors,” said Perez.
The Dreamers Success Center is dedicated to serving undocumented students at Delta, but also welcomes all students regardless of citizenship status.
The center provides a number of resources including information sessions, workshops and other gatherings like coffee talks.
“We hold coffee talks every other Thursday which is a space for students to talk about concerns or worries they may be experiencing as an undocumented students,” said Perez.
The center also hosts an annual Dream Conference every February to share the various opportunities and resources that this center provides. This year’s virtual conference was held on Feb. 4 and 5.
“We hope to create a community with Latinx/Dreamers through many different resources, not just our book club,” said Perez.